I saw last week an old fiver in a cash machine of a shop. The cashier was giving it to a customer before me, but didn't give when she noticed that it was an old one. That's what cashiers used to do in some places when the new fivers came to circulation, but I don't really understand why do they want to take them out of circulation even now when there aren't many left in circulation.

I was happy to get two old fivers on last Wednesday. One from a bank, one from a floor of a restaurant. Indeed, there aren't many of them left in circulation, but it's not easy to take all of them out of circulation, especially when (in Finland) bank cashiers don't usually separate them of the new serie notes.

Received one last Monday from a bank ATM. It was very rare to see one again since they have vanished rather quickly after the introduction of the new series.
But there seem to be some leftovers. Maybe they come from people who have chosen to keep one but decided to spend them now.
The only reason why I received that very piece was because it's a deopsit/pay-out ATM. And I think it pays out what it gets in (and it does not seem to be programmed to sort out the old series)

Nevertheless, be warned that old fivers in circulation are probably not much higher than 1% in Portugal, judging only from my findings: only 3 out of 294 fivers I got in February 2018 were from the 2002 series. Old tenners are about as difficult to find at the moment. Old are still very common though.

On the positive side, Lisbon is very good to find a vast amount of serial/shortcode combinations (of any denomination including Europa ) — and, indeed, for a panoply of other stuff (including visiting, making business and living).

Edit 1: in January, only 4 out of 885 fivers I registered were from the old series.

Edit 2: I just checked the diffusion stats and February seems very strange. If in January only 110 out of 10347 fivers were old (1.06%), this month it's 572 out of 6795 so far (8.42%). I have no idea where they are, but certainly not the places I visit. Either that or someone is faking a lot.

Could known faker Anino/Aleixo have something to do with it? We know this user has a file of serial numbers that he re-enters from time to time, and we're on one of such times. Are they only hit "notes" or could there be non-hit "notes" as well (among which, old fivers)?